Friend request

The high cost of doing business is a massive hindrance to the success of Zambia’s commerce and industry more especially for small and medium enterprises. Of course the lending rate in this country is inconceivably humongous. It is impossible for a Zambian entrepreneur to compete with a South Africa or American counterpart.

However there are more challenges that the Zambian businessman faces. Some of the high costs include marketing and communication costs. Without contest it is the responsibility of the government to create systems that enable business success.

Social media is a great opportunity to reduce communication and marketing costs. Hence Governments must begin to provide infrastructure to ensure that social media is not just a social time wasting experience, but it becomes a tool leveraged to reduce costs of doing business.

In Zambia there are 162,460 people using Facebook, which is 0.77% of the population of the country. Facebook usage in Zambia has grown by only 1.68% in the last one month. There are other social media platforms that are popular in Zambia but clearly Facebook is by far the most used service. It is important to note that the major problem in Zambia is accessibility to internet.

This has not been understood to be incapacitating economic growth in Zambia. Believably that is why we have not seen much political will in efforts intended to increase accessibility to internet. As long as government does not prioritize ICT, we will be a pre-hi-tech nation if not only a post stone age country for ages to come.

In the event that Government effectively facilitates the implementation of fiber optics connectivity to all universities, schools and homes, SMEs would be able to reach their customers in easier cost effective ways. The cost of placing an advert on conventional media is too high for a small business to afford especially during startup. Social Media provides a cost relief for marketing budgets.

Communicating within the company can only get cheaper with Skype, Gtalk, Whatsapp, or G+ messenger among others. With Skype you can make voice and video calls between mobile phones such as the Blackberry, Android phones, Nokia and desktop computers. Gtalk from Google also provides a voice service. On Whatsapp contacts can share video, photos, and audio and text for free as long there data service is active or the mobile device is connected to the internet via WIFI.

All you need to reduce the cost of some of your business processes these days is a data plan with Airtel, MTN, or ZAMTEL and a WAP enabled phone or Internet enable device. You can pay for a fixed internet service and link your WIFI device at your office or home. There are various companies offering fixed wireless internet service such as Coppernet, Microlink, iConnect, Zamnet, Realtime, among others.

The problem is that we are limited by the cost of installation of even availability of service in some areas. That is why government should take it as its responsibility to provide accessibility to internet, the same way it is their responsibility to provide roads and energy. This agenda should not be left to the private sector. In this age it is a core responsibility of the government to provide internet infrastructure.

When we have the internet infrastructure in place, all users will have to do is send a friend request in order to do business. This as simple as it may sound social media is potent with economic boom for Zambia and for many countries in the world.